Most political news is about personality and politics rather than policy.  At the moment that’s particularly true – the big stories of recent weeks have been about Brown’s behaviour, Lord Ashcroft, what the polls say.  Next week promises more of the same – a Channel 4 programme on Cameron, and the court appearance of some of the people charged as part of the expenses scandal.

I’ve often wondered how much difference all this news makes.  Sit through a focus group, or speak to your least political friends and you will hear one thing time and time again: “they are all the same”.  So much of this bad political news is just reinforcing what people think anyway – it is “already in the share price” as they say in the City.

Danny Finkelstein made the point nicely in an article last week:

The cynicism about politics is so pervasive that it embraces almost all political activity. Use a statistic? It’s a lie. Cry on television about your dead child? It’s an election gimmick. Attack your opponents’ policy? You would say that, wouldn’t you.   And this cynicism extends to the media and our coverage.  So not only politics, but news about politics, is seen as a fiction inside an untruth wrapped in a piece of spin… Most of politics and most political coverage proceeds as if there was still a reasonable degree of trust. As if the messages were still getting through, still being listened to, still being weighed up.

For the government of the day the clear implication is that what really matters is not their spin but whether they can deliver better results on the ground (a point grasped by Tony Blair some time in his second term).  It is rather more difficult for the opposition to act on this insight.  However, at the start of his time as Conservative leader David Cameron did emphasise that he would always aim to “show, not tell” people that the party had changed.  And there was something of this in Cameron’s initial reaction to the expenses scandal – when he was prepared to take a stand unpopular among some of his MPs.

The big problem for Cameron is that the Government has managed to shift so much the real-world pain the public will feel until after the election by running up huge debts.  So right now the public services are still hiring away. On the ground, things don’t look so bad.  At least, not yet.

We know more or less what the Budget is going to say already.

The Government is thinking not about how to reduce the soaring deficit – but how to spend the receipts from the super-tax in a pre-election giveaway.  We will see mock “surprise” at how much the bonus tax has raised, and condemnation of those who “said it wouldn’t raise any money”.  We will see big figures for savings based around finally officially scrapping the disastrous NHS IT programme and merging a few Primary Care Trusts.  If Liam Byrne has his way (and he probably won’t) the government may even nod to the markets by stressing how “tough” it is planning to be on public sector pay post election (nominal rises less than 1%, meaning small real-terms cuts).  The one thing it won’t do is make any meaningful effort to control the vast deficit.  Instead the Government will try to keep the debate narrowly focused around the timing of cuts – not the content.

Ironically, this is where public cynicism might ride to the rescue of the Conservatives. The idea that politicians will spend now and cut after the election is highly plausible for most world-weary voters. In the 1974 election Willy Whitelaw accused Harold Wilson of going “round and round the country stirring up apathy”.  The Tories won’t need to go round “stirring up” cynicism about the budget.  But they will need to try and be in a position to exploit it.

Neil O’Brien is the Director of Policy Exchange

What do the Tories stand for? The charge that the Conservatives have not made clear what they stand for has been slowly gathering momentum ironically ever since the Conservatives started their ‘one a week’ policy series. Right wing commentators who are fearful that a Cameron Conservative government will not govern in an appropriately conservative enough way have fanned this criticism. A few weeks ago Simon Heffer clarified this view when writing “the problem for the Tories is this, succinctly put to me by a close observer to the party of the day: if you board a bus anywhere in these islands, sat down next to a passenger at random and asked what it stood for, he or she could not tell you”. This got me thinking. Does Simon Heffer ever use public transport? Who is this sage observer who bothers random people on buses? Is the assertion true? I grabbed my Oyster card and went to the bus stop. In the interests of polling methodology I should reveal that I live what Alistair Campbell may describe as a ‘bog-standard’ middle-class London lifestyle.

I won’t lie to you. At first I was a bit apprehensive about approaching people, but I was glad to find that most people do not mind being asked about their opinions. The instant response was ‘umm not sure’ which was then followed by an opinion of what the Conservatives stood for. The two most popular answers were that the Tories would:

• Cut the deficit
• Promote the family

A couple of people said that they would protect the interests of the rich and one lady said she was not sure but they had to be better than the current lot so she would vote for them anyway.

It is only fair that I answer my own question. For me the Conservatives stand for opportunity, which they will facilitate through governing by trust. A Conservative Government will trust local groups to decide what needs doing and how plans should be executed. Labour’s obsession with mechanical control has been both expensive and stifling. It has lead to the ID card debacle; massive increase in state monitoring and situations such as a 64.4% increase in NHS managers. The Conservatives will also focus on the important task of regaining the public’s trust in politicians and Government. This will be done through the transparency agenda, which will allow people greater choice in deciding how politicians should be accountable.

Since I started my little experiment there has been a media frenzy over the Tory poll-acoaster. Most pundits have been asking the question ‘Why are the Conservatives slipping?’ and then answering their own question by saying ‘I told you so, you’re not the right type of Conservative’. This sort of analysis loses sight of the bigger picture. For me the real question should be ‘Why were the Tories so far ahead in the first place?’. This election is the antithesis of 1997. The electorate is not in the mood to place the same amount of trust and hope in our elected representatives as they did with Tony Blair in the great political love-in of 1997. There is an underlying feeling that no prospective government should be given an easy ride or have its promises taken at face value. The people I spoke to could tell me what the Conservatives stood for but this was not the same as them believing that the Tories would make a positive difference. It seems to be that the deal can only really be sealed once a new Government has proved that they are governing in a new way. Many people will enter the voting booths begrudgingly. This will lead to certain amount of electoral volatility, which will manifest itself in some odd results. The polls should be taken with a pinch of salt, and should not distract us from working hard to promote the benefits of a Conservative government.

My conclusion after a week on the bus is that this country is complex. It is full of people with differing needs and beliefs. While a couple of consistent themes did emerge no one gave me exactly the same answer (apart from the two people who looked at me as if I was a madman before declining to answer). The truth is that the question Simon Heffer poses does not have a single right answer. The Conservative party itself is a complex coalition which contains people who can both strongly agree and disagree with each other depending on the issue being debated. What I hope we can all agree on is that the future of this country is best served by electing the strongest possible Conservative Government. The rights and wrongs of certain policies can be discussed after 6 May. As Tim Montgomerie puts it “this election isn’t a choice between a perfect Conservative Party and an imperfect Conservative Party but between a strong government led by David Cameron and the chaos of a hung parliament.”

George Osborne was right when he said, “We are all in this together”. We need to work together to ensure that there is the best future for all.

PS I want to give a shout out to www.futurefairforall.org I often consult this treasure trove of information before I go out canvassing. It has a lot of evidence, which shows that 13 years of Labour has spectacularly failed to create a ‘future fair for all’.

Toby Young is speaking at a Bright Blue event this Monday night about why he wants to set up his own school under the Conservatives’ plans for Swedish-style school reform.

He will be in discussion with Anthony Seldon, head of Wellington School, about why we educate children, what for, to what end…  Because our schools need to deliver skills and values that prepare our students for twenty first century Britain. Children need the core skills that come from traditional subjects as well as strong communication skills and creativity to be able to thrive.

We have to raise standards for all by supporting the creation of new schools in the most deprived areas so all children have the opportunity to achieve, irrespective of their background.

So are our schools achieving this? If not, why not? And how do we change them so that all our children do have that opportunity?

Anyone can attend: please click here to reserve your place

Update at 9.05am: Anthony Seldon and Peter Hyman (former No 10 staffer and now a deputy head in London) discussed the upcoming debate on Radio 4’s Today programme just before 9am.

Years ago, I worked in advertising. For every ad we made, we had to pass the text and a description through an organisation which has evolved into the Advertising Standards Authority. Their job was to ensure that all ads were “legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes” and without their approval we couldn’t put an ad out (I don’t know quite what the process is these days – it was some time ago that I did this!)

Anyway, Danny Finkelstein’s post last week about Gordon Brown’s policy inventions got me thinking.  While I am as fond as anyone of deliberately misinterpreting what politicians say, I think that the time has come for political advertising to be held to higher standards. And in return, for political parties to be allowed to buy advertising on TV and radio.

Government advertising (all those ads to lose weight, target benefit fraud, combat swine flu…) has increased by 39 per cent in the last year, with 10,000 messages a day.

I was always skeptical about complaints about government advertising, as there are essential messages that any government will want to communicate, and I was never sure about the connection that viewers made between a particular political party and actions carried out by government departments. However, I saw an ad break with at least four government ads in it recently and I have changed my mind – particularly given Labour’s elision of government and Party branding. 

I think it’s time to allow political parties to advertise freely (but not for free!) on TV, radio, cinema, newspapers, billboards, online – wherever they want. But in return, they need to be held to higher standards of truth and honesty in the content of those ads – no more lies about what has and hasn’t been announced as policy, and no more deliberate distortions of what are, after all, generally good intentions.

Our friends at Bright Blue held their inaugural public meeting yesterday evening with Polly Toynbee and Theresa May discussing whether inequality matters.

Setting aside the significance of the presence of Polly Toynbee as the first speaker at a newly-launched Tory event, these snowballing events are hugely important for the party. They are not ‘Conservative’ events, they are events for people interested in Tony Benn’s famous isshooos. And that’s how you build my favourite theory of the cascade of trust.

One particularly interesting question concerned whether you should aim to support (heavily) the ‘bottom’ (that’s shorthand, before anyone decides to complain that I’m being insulting) few per cent at the expense of the next bottom 25 or so per cent. Her question was whether boosting the life chances of the worst-off, even if only by a small amount, is more effective and desirable than helping people who have fewer long-term problems and just need a bit of extra help at some things.

I doubt there’s an answer to this. I am horrified by the suggestion today from the government’s anti-social behaviour czar of taking entire families into care. And yet there are clearly some people who simply can’t cope.  I don’t think morally we can write off the very worst-off as being beyond hope. But equally, governments have a duty to maximise the effect of every penny they spend.

Something that was suggested but not really explored was an experiment discussed in a book called The Spirit Level (also mentioned in David Cameron’s speech on Monday).  Bear with me, it sounds a little unlikely but… A number of monkeys who regarded themselves as high-status were removed from their environments and placed in a new one where they became of low status. Nothing else changed, just their social standing. They became depressed, and listless, and more likely to die younger than expected. The conclusion the researchers drew was that it was the lack of control over their lives that caused at least a significant part of the damage.

This has huge implications. I don’t know how applicable it is to humans, or whether this group was a one-off. But it seems obvious to me as a Conservative that people who feel in control of their lives have a better time of it. I’m not saying that money isn’t important, but part of what money can give you IS control – you can choose where you get your public services from, for example.

Perhaps – just perhaps – there is a wider, slightly left-field by-product of social responsibility and devolving power: that by giving people control over their lives, we make them intrinsically healthier as well as socially stronger.